1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates in general to a server system and a management method, and more particularly to a blade server system with a management bus and method for management thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
A blade server system is a high-density system capable of containing a number of server blades each of which is electrically connected to a common middle plane, or midplane, of the blade server system through corresponding connectors of the server blades specifically designed with high-density pin or socket contact assignment. These contacts of the connectors conduct power signals, high-speed data signals, low-speed data signals, and universal serial bus (USB) signals for the support for different features required by the server blade.
The design of a blade server system requires a balance between the improvement on server performance and the saving of space occupation of the server blades on the middle plane, which provides connection between the inserted server blades and shared resources of the blade server system. Thus, a need for optimum arrangements for the contacts of the connectors for specific functions required by the server blade in limited space is more important than that for providing high-speed signal transmission.
In addition, the design of a blade server system is a trade-off between features and power resource. In order to prevent the power resource from being overloaded, the blade server system may need to worsen its performance or, if necessary, turn off some modules of the system. In the worst case, unexpected system shutdown would occur in case of the power resource overloaded with the whole system.
The operation of a number of conventional buses in the blade server system has a significant impact on the power resource for the blade server system. Before the whole system powering on, system configuration information has to be collected and the system configuration checked. The system needs to update that information frequently even after powered on. After system is powered on, most of the conventional buses, for example, video, COM, inter-integrated circuit (I2C), operate to collect system configuration information. Some of the buses are required operating under standby power from the power source, thus having significant impact on the standby power resource.
Accordingly, it is desirable to reduce the risk of unpredictable shutdown of the blade server system due to such power impact.